To enable a histological assessment, however, a tissue sample of a single piece is required. Three variants are distinguished here. The taking of bone marrow, soft tissue or hard tissue.
Bone marrow is successfully removed with a hollow tube that can have many variants. Soft tissue from bone (e.g. in the event of malignant soft tissue) is done by a soft tissue biopsy system.
But to take a tissue sample that only consists of bone tissue, such as for example from the cortex of the bone or a tumour that consists purely of bone, a bone drill, also called a bone drill needle, is required.
The known bone drills generally only yield small tissue fragments, or scrapings, that present little coherence. As a result, it is difficult to determine the structure of the bone.
Improvements are known from FR 2.625.429 and GB 2.164.277 for example, that describe bone drills that are tubular and thereby have an internal cavity in which a larger, more or less intact, tissue sample can be located, so that a high-quality examination of the bone can be done.
However, the known bone drills have the disadvantage that when implementing a bone biopsy, bone chips or bone flakes are formed. These can spread in the body of the person undergoing the bone biopsy, which can lead to undesired complications, such as the spread of cancer tissue through the body.